It was only a matter of time before the tenuous sort of intimacy between them broke. But Natasha sorta thought she'd be the one to break it. And the hurt twisting up her stomach probably has more to do with the unfamiliar feeling of rejection than anything else. Because of course it couldn't last.

She wanders away, putting some distance and the length of a work bench between them. She makes a great show of peering curiously at the little bits and pieces littering its surface in between surreptitious glances darted in his direction, flickering over the tense set of his shoulders or the way his hand flits over the engine parts like a particularly indecisive butterfly.

"But at least you know what they're doing to you," she argues with a wince. "You won't go in to have a bullet dug out of you and wake up with a kidney gone or a bomb nestled in your guts." The latter had happened to one of the girls. Marusya. Sweet little blonde thing. She was failing out of the Program and determined to get at least some use out of her the Red Room turned her into a human bomb without telling her. Then on her next mission, they detonated her once she was in range of the multiple marks that needed taking out. Her death was messy and immediate, but most of all useful.

"I woke up with blonde hair once," she offers, picking up a screwdriver and turning it over in her hands, digging the business end against the pad of her thumb and twisting it absently. "Gave me one hell of a shock."